I grew up Roman Catholic. Went to Catholic school (parochial schools) from 1st though 12th grade (from 1974 though 1986) in Ohio.
My grade school – 1974 though 1982 – was left wing. I remember making “anti nuclear power” posters, and everything was about “helping the homeless” and “helping the poor and starving.”
In college I realized everything I was taught was a fraud, as the welfare recipients I was delivering pizzas to were living much better off than me.
Yeah, this thread is definitely make me feel like this is very dependent on parish and location. We had food drives and all that kind of stuff, but the anti-welfare sentiment was very strong, in my estimation, in the community. Also a lot of anti-union sentiment.
What’s funny is my old Mexican grandmother was a lot more liberal in some ways than I was when I was younger.
I can’t use a very broad brush. In the United States, I would say the laity leans to left, and the younger generations lean further to the left. The clergy leans to the right, and the older generations lean further to the right. I imagine the dynamic is similar in European countries. Not sure about Latin America, Africa or Asia.
But like others noted above, the average Catholic leans much further to the left on economic issues than social issues. Most are very pro-labor, pro-union and pro-life (as bienville defined it - anti-abortion and anti-death penalty). Politically, I think local politics trump any national issue when supporting or not supporting candidates.
My parents are Catholic, and fairly left wing. Since we came back to Australia, they can’t find a parish they are comfortable with, as all the local ones swing much more right.
Are you still talking about the United States in your second paragraph? Because the average American Catholic isn’t especially anti-abortion or anti-death penalty.
I think of American Catholics who are *not *clergy as leaning left. I think of Catholic clergy as leaning to the right. Overall, the Catholic Church, in America at least, seems to be composed of leadership and membership who are woefully out of touch with each other.
My broad brush says that most Catholics I’ve ever known are pleasantly tolerant and lean left in general, except they often have one or two hotbutton pet causes that they are rabidly right-wing about, and one needs to tiptoe around those topics in conversation. It’s often abortion, but could also be immigration, foreign affairs (the Middle East, Northern Ireland, British imperialism, etc.) or marriage related issues.
More right than left in my experience. I think it has changed a lot since the 60s due to abortion.
I know some Catholics who are very left, and some who are very right. I believe they come in all pursuasions.
Every one I’ve met thinks of themselves as right leaning, but this is defined entirely on social issues, particularly abortion. Most are actually quite left-leaning financially–but only when you talk to them calmly. Otherwise, they, like many other people, seem to have allegiance to the party without noticing the cognitive dissonance.
I still can’t get past the people who seem to be perfectly Christ-like until the subject of Obama comes up, where they become gossip-filled hate mongers. To be fair, that’s a religious right thing, not a Catholic thing. But Catholics are definitely members of the religious right.
I would agree that Catholics often are more on the left economically but also tend to be pro-life and for some the pro-life issue becomes the trump card that leads them to vote Republican. According to at least one sociologist (Ziad Munson) the pro-life movement (in the sense of opposing abortion) originally started as a mostly progressive Catholic movement. The pro-life movement was then adopted by conservative Republican protestants as an intentional effort to use the pro-life movement to draw people to the Republican side. Since nowadays the pro-life side is not really welcome in the Democratic party on a national level (you do see some state-level Democratic politicians who are pro-life, but very little on a national level), it’s very easy for people who see abortion as one of the most serious issues in society today (as many Catholics do) to feel that the Republican party is the best place for them even if they have other ideas that would line up more with the Dems.
I think the Dems could capture a lot of these people if they had a national level politician who was pro-life without being castigated by pro-choicers in the party. For example, among these examples of people who identify as pro-life Democrats I notice that several of them specifically invoke their Catholic views in explaining why they are both pro-life and Democrats.